Sarah H. Wright, MIT News Office This article was
reprinted from Tech Talk, a publication of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
News Office

Every algae's got a hungry heart, and-who knew?-some algae are
especially hungry for the tasty toxins in modern smog. For example, single-cell
algae readily consume carbon dioxide and other power plant emissions and emit
oxygen during photosynthesis.

This makes single-cell algae tiny power plants in their own
right-power plants that may transform toxic emissions to renewable energy, according
to Isaac Berzin, 37, a former postdoctoral student in chemical engineering and
founder of a Cambridge-based company, GreenFuel
Technologies.

Berzin started GreenFuel, a 2001 receipient of a $1,000 grant in the MIT $50K
Entrepreneurship Competition and an additional $10K as 2002 runner-up, with
guidance from MIT faculty including Robert Langer, the Kenneth J. Germeshausen
Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering; Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic,
principal research scientist in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences
and Technology, and Charles Fine, Chrysler Leaders for Manufacturing Professor
in the Sloan School of Management.

Berzin retains a student's delight in discovery and natural
processes. Speaking of algae, he has said, &quot;It's very tolerant of everything.
You can find it in the Charles River, in sewage, in boiling water, in ice, in
Antarctica, in the Dead Sea."

Berzin's idea is simple, once you accept algae's appetites and
its astonishing efficiency. Laboratory research at GreenFuel had already demonstrated
that single-cell algae could consume carbon dioxide or nitrogen oxides and then
be &quot;harvested" in a reusable form. This form, a biomass similar to an artist's
soft charcoal, potentially could be burned like coal or liquefied into oil or
used to make plastics, nutraceuticals or food.

Now, Berzin and GreenFuel are taking their system to the roof
of MIT's cogeneration plant on Vassar Street.
Their goal: to determine if the system can be scaled up so actual emissions
from a live power plant can be transformed from greenhouse gases to, well, green
resources.

GreenFuel has installed 30 bioreactors on the roof of the Cogen
plant, MIT's main steam, chilled water and electrical power plant. Each bioreactor
is composed of polycarbonate tubing in the shape of a triangle; the tubes are
clear, to allow sunlight in. Inside each tube, exhaust will mix with the algae.
Thanks to photosynthesis, the algae will consume the CO2 and pollutants, grow
in volume and give off oxygen and nitrogen.

The algae will be harvested and dried into the charcoal-like
solid to be reused as fuel. In a later phase Cogen heat may be used for the
drying process.

Peter Cooper, director of utilities, commented, &quot;The Department
of Facilities is very pleased to host this beta test of a very promising technology
that addresses the difficult issue of greenhouse gas emissions reduction. When
Cogen came on line in 1995 using state-of-the-art gas turbine technology, it
reduced regulated pollutants by 45%. Also, by the fact that cogeneration reuses
otherwise wasted heat, thereby burning less fuel in the fist place, MIT's CO2
emissions dropped by nearly 60,000 tons. As a utility engineer I think of the
GreenFuel process capturing CO2 for reuse as analogous to cogeneration's reuse
of energy."

The GreenFuel bioreactors are currently visible from the sidewalk
in front of Building 37 on the MIT campus.

Inventor Isaac Berzin, left, converses
with Peter Cooper, director of utilities in MIT's Department of Facilities,
atop MIT's cogeneration plant. Berzin's company, GreenFuel, is installing
bioreactors consisting in part of temperature-controlled tubes, at right,
which will hold algae through which waste gases will pass.

Photo / Donna Coveney/MIT

The content & opinions in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of AltEnergyMag

Post A Comment

Featured Product

Eliminate Solar Rack Ballast and Reduce Rooftop Material Handling. PowerGrip™ Universal (PGU) is a commercial roof mount system designed to secure solar racks and other equipment to any type of commercial roofing system. PGU provides a secure connection directly to the roof deck or structural members and is designed to reduce or eliminate ballast in solar racking systems, so there's less weight on the roof and less material handling. Made of heavy-duty cast aluminum, PGU units include a base ring which is secured through the roofing cover and into the structural roof deck, and a waterproof top plate.